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I think I agree at least about a motion to strike out. There's a chance that an abuse of process argument could have been made, though if that failed the existe

by pmyteh 5y ago

I think I agree at least about a motion to strike out. There's a chance that an abuse of process argument could have been made, though if that failed the existence of the US copyright registration does seem to at least raise issues of fact (about Wright's ownership and/or the meaning in US law of a copyright registration, as foreign law is often a matter for expert evidence) that would need a trial. For me, the question is not so much whether the respondent should be anonymous from the legal system (I think fairly clearly not) but whether there should be a scope of anonymity from the claimant and the public (a reasonable case here, I think, as none of the copyright issues really turn on the respondent's identity) and whether the application could be made without putting the identity on record first. And the High Court, against a deep pocketed opponent, without my own legal team, is not an ideal venue to try to find out. And, depending on Cøbra's opsec, it may be that they would be exposable via a third-party Norwich Pharmacal order anyway :-/ The costs are really in the same problem space as the main claim, I think: an application for costs to be assessed would probably dramatically lower the amount 'reasonably' due - but that would mean appearing as a party. [edit: not to say it wouldn't be ruinously expensive anyway - I see the summary assessment of costs up to summary judgment already runs to £35k. The High Court is not cheap.]

nullc 5y ago
> For me, the question is not so much whether the respondent should be anonymous from the legal system (I think fairly clearly not) but whether there should be a scope of anonymity from the claimant and the public The tricky thing here is that what Cobra needs isn't protection from the public, -- which would be hard to provide with any reliability but at least is conceptually not challenging, but privacy from the plaintiffs -- because he has a reasonable fear that the plaintiffs will use the information in some criminal way to harm him. (Also because in another case Wright went ahead and publicly disclosed the identity of a confidential witness that the court had sealed, and Wright suffered no consequence for it.) I think privacy from the plaintiffs is harder conceptually, because there may come some point where there needs to be a factual argument that depends on their identity-- certainly the plaintiffs would push as hard as they could in whatever direction they needed to accomplish that-- including, based on prior conduct, forging documents to support a false narrative. [One of the reasons we think they've been trying to get Cobra's identity-- beyond just threatening him with it-- is that we know wright has told people that Cobra "stole" bitcoin.org from him, but since he knows nothing about who cobra is or how he ended up in control of Bitcoin.org he can't fake up any documentary support for this fiction.] It's unclear if they could obtain Cobra's identity from a third party. They certainly tried pretty hard. When they were trying to obtain my address they used a storm of pretexting phone calls and such. At least they tried very hard, and were unsuccessful absent an order. Yeah, indeed, Cobra has the same problem with costs-- he's having a difficult time within the legal framework of challenging them without exposing his identity.

by pmyteh 5y ago

nullc 5y ago

> For me, the question is not so much whether the respondent should be anonymous from the legal system (I think fairly clearly not) but whether there should be a scope of anonymity from the claimant and the public The tricky thing here is that what Cobra needs isn't protection from the public, -- which would be hard to provide with any reliability but at least is conceptually not challenging, but privacy from the plaintiffs -- because he has a reasonable fear that the plaintiffs will use the information in some criminal way to harm him. (Also because in another case Wright went ahead and publicly disclosed the identity of a confidential witness that the court had sealed, and Wright suffered no consequence for it.) I think privacy from the plaintiffs is harder conceptually, because there may come some point where there needs to be a factual argument that depends on their identity-- certainly the plaintiffs would push as hard as they could in whatever direction they needed to accomplish that-- including, based on prior conduct, forging documents to support a false narrative. [One of the reasons we think they've been trying to get Cobra's identity-- beyond just threatening him with it-- is that we know wright has told people that Cobra "stole" bitcoin.org from him, but since he knows nothing about who cobra is or how he ended up in control of Bitcoin.org he can't fake up any documentary support for this fiction.] It's unclear if they could obtain Cobra's identity from a third party. They certainly tried pretty hard. When they were trying to obtain my address they used a storm of pretexting phone calls and such. At least they tried very hard, and were unsuccessful absent an order. Yeah, indeed, Cobra has the same problem with costs-- he's having a difficult time within the legal framework of challenging them without exposing his identity.